/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>1269333
Oh I know what I'm getting into, but until I'm out into the workforce I don't think I can afford a decent scope. Same to a lesser extent with the LCR meter and multimeter. I've got a temperature controlled iron and a cheap DMM that are serving me mostly fine, the USB iron was somewhat of a curiosity buy, but I can see myself having to repair a PCB in the field sometime soon so it might see use. I'm always on the hunt for a nice second-hand 2-channel CRT scope, but their sellers seem to know what they're worth so I haven't found "that deal" yet. My desk doesn't have much room for one anyway. The scope is also half worth buying just as a little soldering practice, especially since I've not touched a soldering iron for the last few months.

With the LCR meter it treated a voltage regulator like a BJT and doesn't seem to be able to discern different series/parallel combinations of passives, but it was able to tell me the capacitance between a PCB and a sheet of anodised aluminium, which was neat. I mainly bought it for the hand-wound inductors, but being able to measure resistances higher than my DMM is nice too.

Pic related is the USB soldering iron's circuit. No clue what the crystal-looking thing is though, it has an open top through which I can see what looks like a coil or spring of copper. I think I broke it already, turns out that element wasn't meant to be pulled out. I'll see about replacing the missing element with a piece of solid copper wire. Though I don't think this 555 circuit regulates current/power very well, the LED looked like it had an approx. 50% duty cycle when the element wasn't working, 0.5Hz or so.